The Marquee Over Leimert Park, the Vision Theatre Returns
The 1932 movie palace Marla Gibbs once owned reopened as a 729-seat stage after a nearly $40 million restoration.
The tower is lit again over 43rd Place. Leimert Park’s Vision Theatre reopened with a ribbon-cutting on Thursday, August 20, and the LA Sentinel reported that more than 500 people turned out.
The building opened in 1932 as the Leimert Theatre, designed by Morgan, Walls & Clements in an Art Deco and Spanish Colonial Revival style, and ran as a movie house until 1968. The actress Marla Gibbs bought it in the early 1990s and renamed it the Vision Theatre, and the City of Los Angeles bought it later that decade.
Construction began in 2011, and the total investment comes to nearly $40 million, including an $11 million rehabilitation finished in 2012. The restoration brought back the Art Deco details and the auditorium’s ceiling mural, and added new audio, video and lighting systems. The house now seats 729, down from the original 1,100.
The city’s Department of Cultural Affairs runs it with WACO Theater Center, short for Where Art Can Occur, the nonprofit co-founded by Tina Knowles and Richard Lawson. The reopening included a screening of Matthew A. Cherry’s Oscar-winning animated short Hair Love.
August was the beginning, not the premiere. LAist reports a grand opening planned for November and a first full season of 15 to 20 shows and events starting in February 2027.
